Installation failed: Destination folder already exists.

  • Resolved jbmoore

    (@jbmoore)


    6 years, 4 months ago

    Hi,

    Trying to install Wordfence on a site hosted by Network Solutions. I’m an old web developer (25 years) and have installed this plugin on so many sites that I’ve lost track and this is the first I have encountered this error. Here is what I have done:

    1) Checked permissions on site folder and undated as needed.
    2) Installed other plugins to see if other installs have problems.. nada
    3) SFTP to site and checked upload folder and plugin folder for any unresolved issues. Clean
    4) Installed Health Check and reviewed all issues.. There were two.. one that the php version is 5.3.29-pl0-gentoo which is very out of date.. could this be the problem? Also the MySql version is 5.0.91 and is not supporting utf8mb4.

    Can anyone think of something I missed checking or have any suggestions?

    Thanks.. John

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter jbmoore

    (@jbmoore)

    Additional information:

    After the install failure the wordfence folder does then exist (did not before) and the wordfence plugin shows up in the plugins page as inactive. Attempting to activate it results in this error:
    ================
    An error occurred.

    Sorry, the page you are looking for is currently unavailable.
    Please try again later.

    If you are the system administrator of this resource then you should check the error log for details.

    Faithfully yours, OpenResty.
    =================

    Since I don’t have access to the PHP log files at this time I don’t have any further info on this.

    Hi John,

    Since the plugin is installed now but inactive, I suggest deleting the plugin folder manually from (/wp-content/plugins/) directory (by connecting to your site via SFTP), then try to reinstall the plugin again via WordPress Dashboard.

    Although the plugin can work on that PHP version you have, we highly recommend upgrading to PHP version 5.6 or greater, and preferably PHP 7.0 or greater as stated in WordPress requirements page.

    Let me know how it goes,
    Thanks.

    Thread Starter jbmoore

    (@jbmoore)

    Thanks for getting back to me..

    Yes I assumed that the PHP version needed to be upgraded so I told the client to contact Network Solutions and get that done.. it is done.

    And Yes I did manually delete that folder several times and tried the re install and it still is failing for the same “reasons” (same error). And… again after the PHP version was upgraded. (It escapes me why a company like Network Solutions would keep an out of date PHP version still in production.. Arrgggg)

    Any other ideas..???

    Thanks again.. John..

    Hi John,

    Well, it seems that there is another idea that might be specific to this web host which is updating MySQL database to version 5.6 as mentioned on that other thread, please ask them to do that update for you and let me know how it goes.

    Thanks.

    Thread Starter jbmoore

    (@jbmoore)

    Thanks for following up on this..

    I had the database updated and that fixed the “OpenResty” error.. but not the “installation failed” issue.

    What I have done since then is to create an entirely new website on a different host on that domain (often referred to as a sub-domain). On the fresh WordPress install (no plugins.. nothing) I installed Wordfence.. Same error:

    Installation failed: Destination folder already exists.

    But.. fortunately what was different this time, is that I was able to activate the “failed” install. I guess this is a bogus error ????, but I would think this should be investigated as it may be a bit confusing.. ya think??

    Thanks again for all the feedback..

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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